The Power of the Tradition

The things that we say and do, the places we frequent, and the very Bible that we hear and ponder....these are things of power that carry Good News to us.

Today on this All Saints Day we rejoice as we name just a few of them.

One of the great things about The Way is that it stirs up questions and provides a good place to ask them.

On a Sunday several seasons back, we were puzzling over the custom we have at the 8:00 service for the Assisting Minister to walk over to the House of Grace, pick up the Bible that is kept open during the week to the Gospel of the Day, carry it to the pulpit and then invite me to read from it for all of us.

Why do we do that?

Some think that is a silly and unnecessary ceremony, but let's consider what this action is saying.

Here we are, a group of modern, sophisticated people in the USA.

What we don't know, we can look up on the internet;

we have more possessions and better opportunities than most anyone else in the world.

But in spite of that, we get ready to listen to words written 2 – 3,000 years ago, and see how our lives should be shaped to fit the reality proclaimed in those pages.

We are calling attention to this particular object, this book, God's Word, as a very visible reminder to the reading readings and the sermon are not to be the pastor's opinions about inconsequential things,

but are to be God's word from outside of our experience, brought in to change us.

Let's think about a few of those words:

And Jesus looked at his disciples , and said: Blessed are you poor , for yours is the kingdom of God....

Blessed are you, blessed will be you whose poverty may be of various kinds:

--economic distress,

--poverty of companionship lost

--poverty of hopelessness

--poverty of spiritual disconnection from God.

We can be poor in any or all of those ways, recognizing that we cannot change this situation by ourselves.

It can only come as a gift from God, as we explored the idea last Sunday.

Blessed are those who recognize this, and who therefore receive God's grace by ear and by mouth.

This up to date word of God's gift is brought to us by way of that old, old thing, the Bible.

It is peculiarly wonderful that the old book which carries the voices of those who died long ago in the faith

is exactly up to date...

...or better...it is far in front of us!, ready to guide us as we move toward God's completed kingdom.

As smart as we are, we are no different than are

our ancestors in the faith,

and the disciples in the first churches,

scattered around the Roman empire.

How could they, and how can we hold onto faith, in the face of all of the competing claims of other religions,

with the mocking of neighbors,

with the distractions of all sorts,

with overt persecution in various times and places,

and always with the power of death looming large in our experience.??

We do what each generation has needed to do – we allow ourselves to be embraced by the tradition, to be guided and shaped by scripture.

We are not the first to wrestle with difficult situations and to know the sting of death.

All Saints Day is one of the times that the church remembers ordinary saints, not only the great heroes.

Most saints are quite unspectacular believers who have walked the path of faith before us.

Through the Bible, through our collective memory, and through our individual memory and experience,

all of the saints, both ordinary and heroic ones, encourage us to persevere.

One of the pernicious faults of modern times is that we keep talking about how “free” we are.

We have freed ourselves from everything, and especially free from the dead past, we like to claim.

It is an illusion, of course.

We're not free; all that we have done is to make ourselves slaves to the arrogant rule of those who just happen to be walking around right now.

That is no better, and may be a lot worse than the voices of Christian experience from the saints of centuries past.

The power of the tradition:

Over the past several years I have been accumulating the 25 volumes of a series entitled Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.

A group of editors have combed through the writings from the first 6 centuries or so of the church.

For each passage of scripture, they have found excerpts from the church fathers that reflect on that passage, and print the excerpts together.

Sometimes the comments I find a bit odd.

Some I don't understand.

Some I find useful.

But all are enlightening.

It is quite humbling to realize that so many others have spent long years thinking about and writing about the Gospel Good News of Jesus even while facing profound difficulties.

The power of the tradition:

About 40 years ago the Israeli army was beginning to prepare a new road to ascent the Golan heights at the northeastern corner of the Sea of Galilee.

Quite by accident they began to uncover a complex site that no one knew was even there.

The road project was moved elsewhere and the archaeologists took over.

The site is named Kursi, one of the places which I visited in Israel.

It had been destroyed, covered over, and forgotten for more an 1100 years, but from the 3^rd to the 8^th centuries it had been a special site of pilgrimage for Christians in Israel.

This is the place traditionally associated with Jesus' miracle of driving the demons into the swine.

A marvelous basilica was built there with beautiful floor mosaics which still survive.

Why there?

Because this is one of the places where Jesus demonstrated that he cared about Gentiles as well as Jews.

He came to a Gentile village a few miles away from the Jewish town of Capernaum, and healed a Gentile man.

Gentile Christian pilgrims wanted to honor those Gentiles who had the opportunity to interact with Jesus personally.

Standing there so many centuries later, I could offer a prayer of appreciation for all those saints who cared enough about the scriptures to tell the story of Jesus, to remember this particular incident, to visit that specific place, and to say thank you to God who binds us together all across the years.

The power of the tradition:

Another of the places that reminds me of the communion of the saints is Kalambaka in Greece.

A monastery was built on the top of an almost inaccessible volcanic rock.

everything they needed had to be brought up by winch and pulley.

They would go down to tend their gardens, etc. and then back up to sleep and to pray.

We quietly stepped into their church built of bricks which they had hoisted up there a few at a time.

The wooden book-rests were worn smooth.

Some of the oldest icons were clouded by the smoke of candles and incense from generations of monks.

The entire place spoke of their perseverance in the face of Muslim oppression for 5 centuries,

and perseverance despite hardships both physical and spiritual.

The communion of the saints was quite a visible thing, since there is a charnel house there which is filled with the bones of generation after generation of monks who have worked and prayed in that monastery.

They lined up the skulls on shelves around that room.

All of those bones together spoke eloquently of their hope and expectation that they will continue together in the completed kingdom of God.

But we don't have to travel to exotic locations such as Kursi or Kalabaka to know that power.

Whenever we allow our ears and eyes and hands and mouth and spirit to be touched by the Bible, by the tradition, and by companions in the faith,

we have access to this power.

Right here in this Sunday gathering we have entered something much larger and more important and more profound than ourselves!

Today we take part in a holy conversation that began long before any of us were born, and will continue until we have all moved to the heavenly side of things.

Today we remember with thanks:

--the starting point with disciples and apostles, martyrs and confessors;

--the examples from both ordinary and heroic saints all across the years;

--the things that convey Christ, the scriptures and the sacraments;

--the places where Christians have gathered to honor Christ in the past and present;

--the model of trust and openness which beginners in the faith demonstrate;

--the steadfastness of those aged ones who have died in the faith.

Today we sing with thanksgiving for all of this tradition, this promise, this joy.

If our voices falter because of grief or sorrow of any kind, know that the rest of the saints are singing with us and for us: Alleluia. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.